Anyone use Swirl Prepaid cards instead of One4All Vouchers

mjp

Giving €500 vouchers to staff for first time this xmas and looking at an alternative to One4All and seeing mastercards Swirl Card. Looks like we load money onto card and that its accepted anywhere that accepts mastercard. I see that shops have to have card machine that has ability to swipe the cards which has me worried about whether that is going to be an issue using in most places.

Anyone able share experiences of swirl card or any alternative? Know lot of One4All users had a nightmare trying to validate their cards last year as each card over €250 had to be validated with One4All over the phone for Anti money laundering purposes which had huge delays with everyone trying to validate their the week before xmas.

Gregor Samsa

One4All cards are the bane of my life around this time of year. I find them a pain, and usually end up with 2 or 3.

I got a Swirl card 3 years ago from my boss. I spent it online, so I don’t have any experience with the card-swiping situation, but it worked fine and I was happy to get it. I bought a voucher for Thomann (online musical instrument shop) and put the money towards something big.

Last year I got a voucher from AllGifts.ie. It’s a bit different, as it’s a voucher that you buy other vouchers with. But you can buy Amazon, Argos, Curry’s, DID, Tesco, Dunnes, Lidl and loads of other shop ones with it, so it’s quite usable - both online and offline.

really hoping I don’t amass the multiple One4All ones again this year.

I've gotten them from my job the last three years at Christmas. They do have to be swiped in a shop to use them, you can't tap or insert. They are very easy to use online and very easy to setup too. Most big stores like M&S, Arnotts, Dunnes etc... should still have swipey card machines. I know M&S do 'cos I spent about €200 of this year's card there on Saturday. Honestly, I'd let your staff worry about the swiping thing, they can be used online very easily.

markest

Have used a Perx card by swiping mag stripe in store.

newmember2

I use Swift all the time for transactions I don't want appearing on my bank statement.

dannyzuko

Following as I have the same question - I usually buy One4All gift cards for staff at Christmas but like OP said, the registering process is a pain and with the limit going up this year, One4All still only have €150 limit on the non-registering ones so it doesn't make sense.

Re swiping in shops - One4Alls also have to be swiped, so it figures that Swirl will at least be accepted in all the places One4All are.

I'm very close to ordering Swirl cards this year, but I just had an idea to check reviews first, seems a bit mixed?

ablelocks

we use Perx cards - don't know about the set up and admin of them, but as a user they are perfect